Wednesday, October 28, 2015

Yeah, they talk big . . .

The howler monkeys whose guttural calls reverberate through Central and South American rainforests possess a secret that the males of the species may prefer to be left unrevealed, . . . [for even though they] make among the loudest, deepest sounds of any land animal, . . . [using] their roars to attract the ladies for mating and [to] intimidate other males, . . . scientists on Thursday said they have discovered a curious paradox: males that make the . . . [deepest] calls[, which are] considered the most alluring to potential mates[,] are endowed with the lowest reproductive potential [and] the littlest testes for sperm production[,] . . . an "evolutionary trade-off" for male howler monkeys between vocal tract and testes size. (Will Dunham, "Howl of a good time: Deep monkey roars come with intimate secret," Reuters, October 23, 2015)

0 Comments:

About Me

I am a professor at Ewha Womans University, where I teach composition, research writing, and cultural issues, including the occasional graduate seminar on Gnosticism and Johannine theology and the occasional undergraduate course on European history.
My doctorate is in history (U.C. Berkeley), with emphasis on religion and science. My thesis is on John's gospel and Gnosticism.
I also work as one-half of a translating team with my wife, and our most significant translation is Yi Kwang-su's novel The Soil, which was funded by the Literature Translation Institute of Korea.
I'm also an award-winning writer, and I recommend my novella, The Bottomless Bottle of Beer, to anyone interested.
I'm originally from the Arkansas Ozarks, but my academic career -- funded through doctoral and postdoctoral fellowships (e.g., Fulbright, Naumann, Lady Davis) -- has taken me through Texas, California, Switzerland, Germany, Australia, and Israel and has landed me in Seoul, South Korea. I've also traveled to Mexico, visited much of Europe, including Moscow, and touched down briefly in a few East Asian countries.
Hence: "Gypsy Scholar."